Eric Bloat of Bloat Games has a new Kickstarter creating two books for SURVIVE THIS!! Fantasy Tabletop RPG. I’ve gamed with Eric at Origins Game Fair 2018, gotten his thoughts on several RPG crowdfunding projects, reviewed SURVIVE THIS!! Zombies! and The Blackest of Deaths for Knights of the Dinner Table, and wrote a short story for his forthcoming anthology. With the newest book in the SURVIVE THIS!! series crowdfunding, it seems to be the right time to add a full interview to my Eric Bloat bingo card.
EGG EMBRY (EGG): Eric, thanks for talking with me. You’re doing a new RPG Kickstarter, what is it?
ERIC BLOAT (EB): My pleasure! SURVIVE THIS!! Fantasy two-book combo Kickstarter. This Kickstarter is to fund both the Core Rules and Game Master’s Guide for SURVIVE THIS!! Fantasy (STF) Tabletop Roleplaying Game. STF mixes old-school sensibilities with modern game design in a d20 based game system.
EGG: Your work is the definition of OSR (Old School Revival/Old School Renaissance). What mechanical differences can fans expect with SURVIVE THIS!! Fantasy Tabletop RPG compared to early D&D?
EB: How we handle magic and psionics, and our leveling systems, are all unique to us. I’ll explain: Magic comes from magical tattoos that anyone can acquire, but if they are not part of a magical race/class, it is very dangerous to do so. When you cast a spell, magical glowing runes appear in the air momentarily and can be used to track you by those with the knowledge to read them.
Psionics is a five-tiered power system where the more you use it, the better you get. Both magic and psionics can backfire or be pushed with a risk of catastrophe.
Leveling up is [experience point] based but not solely focused on killing or collecting treasure. [Experience points] are earned five different ways: Session survival, encounter [experience points], exceptional roleplaying, discretionary, and hero [experience points]. And the [experience point] numbers are lower. You will not achieve thousands of [experience points], more like five per session.
We also have an additional Luck attribute that allows you to spend a point of Luck to re-roll any undesirable roll, much like DCC RPG. And we have added Advantage/Disadvantage from 5e.
- Attributes: Strength, Intelligence, Wisdom, Dexterity, Constitution, Charisma, and Luck
- Savings Throws: Each Character has six Saving Throws: COURAGE, CRITICAL, DEATH, MAGIC, MENTAL, and POISON
- Alignment: Righteous, Law, Neutral, Anarchist, and Evil
- Skills: 38 broad skills
All of this differs from standard old school D&D.
EGG: This is “fully compatible with SURVIVE THIS!! Zombies!, Dark Places & Demogorgons, and Vigilante City.” Can you give us a quick pitch for each of those RPGs?
EB: SURVIVE THIS!! Zombies! allows players the chance to live in the world of The Walking Dead, but instead of just having “Walker” zombies, we have added zombies from throughout the zombie genre like Fast Zombies, Slow Zombies, Talking Zombies, Voodoo Zombies, Smart Zombies, Zombie Leaders, Ooze Zombies, and many more. If you have seen it in a zombie movie or show, it most likely exists in our game.
Dark Places & Demogorgons is our take on the 80s kids-on-bike movie genre brought back to popularity by shows like Stranger Things. It’s all-things-80s-horror packed with full of references and quotes from the decade we all loved.
Vigilante City is a love letter to the comic cartoons of the 1990s like Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Batman: The Animated Series, Spider-man, and X-Men. It’s street-level masked vigilantes, mutants, ‘borgs, and a whole lot more.
EGG: The new project is a fantasy RPG; the others use a more modern setting. Why make them compatible?
EB: We’re massive fans of Palladium Books and their games like Rifts, Beyond The Supernatural, Heroes Unlimited, and Palladium Fantasy. We love how they created a shared universe (the Megaverse) for their games and utilizing compatible rules so players and GMs could mix and match as they pleased. That’s precisely what we are trying to do with SURVIVE THIS!!
EGG: This is not your first fantasy RPG. How is this different from The Blackest of Deaths?
EB: The Blackest of Deaths is fun but no-frills fantasy game that is just absolutely brutal and unforgiving. It was created to be a meat-grinder and not a lot more. What The Blackest of Deaths does, it does well but it’s not a fully fleshed out rules set like SURVIVE THIS!! Fantasy. If STF and BoD were Wes Craven horror films, STF would be Scream and BoD would be Last House on the Left, for the few that understand that reference.
EGG: SURVIVE THIS!! Fantasy Tabletop RPG comes as two books. What prompted that decision?
EB: Too much content for one! Initially, I wanted to try to squeeze it into one book, but when the original draft clocked in over 400 pages, I knew that was just too much. So we split them into Core Rules (Player Handbook) and Game Master’s Guide (DMG and Monster Manual).
EGG: You have a sizable creative team on this one. As the publisher you can’t play favorites, so I’m going to pick two creators and ask you about them. From time-to-time I talk to Brandon K. Aten and Justin Isaac. What are they contributing and what makes them right for this project?
EB: I totally would have chosen favorites. Brandon and Justin are each contributing advice-driven essays for new Game Masters to help explain situations that arise at the game table and how to handle them. I have a core team that I consider The Bloat Games Crew and both Brandon and Justin are part of that. I will always try to find a way to add them when I can.
EGG: With this campaign, you offered a “Financial Hardship” tier that went quickly and a “Support a Friend” tier that lets the backer give out POD coupons to friends. Your putting the game into the hands of gamers instead of focusing on money. Can you talk about Bloat Games’ philosophy on building the gaming community and how these options integrate into it?
EB: I grew up in poverty. I never had the money for gaming books and had to rely on my friends to let me borrow or use their books to play when I first started. So when I started Bloat Games, I knew that I never wanted financial difficulties to be a barrier that kept people from playing our games. That’s really where our philosophy comes from. We encourage anyone who wants to check out games to reach out to Bloat Games on social media and we will get you taken care of.
EGG: What other projects are you working on?
EB: We usually have a massive backlog of projects that we are working on in the background, but Josh Palmer and myself have kind of cleared our plates to focus on STF to get it to the customer as soon as possible. We want that to be priority #1.
EGG: Thanks for talking with me. Where can fans learn more about your work?
EB: Thank you for having me! We’re on most social media but the best to follow us on is Facebook.
SURVIVE THIS!! Fantasy Tabletop RPG 2 Book Kickstarter from Bloat Games
End Date: Tue, June 9 2020 9:51 AM EDT.
“Fully compatible with SURVIVE THIS!! Zombies!, Dark Places & Demogorgons, and Vigilante City.”
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